OXFORD, Miss.  Tennessee
Williams devotees and others may laugh to keep from crying at the
dismal but heartfelt themes that run through the American playwrights
Slapstick Tragedy, which plays April 18-20 at The University of
Mississippis Fulton Chapel.

In an unusual twist, the audience will be seated
on the stage, so the auditorium becomes a warehouse for the actors.

Curtains open at 8 p.m. on the Oxford campus
for each UM Department of Theatre Arts-sponsored performance. Tickets are $8
for adults, $6.50 for seniors, $5.50 for children under 18, and $4.50 for UM
students. They are available at the Central Ticket Office.

I think audiences will be surprised by
a Tennessee Williams they may not yet have encountered, said director
Michele Cuomo, a UM assistant professor of theatre arts. I hope they will
be startled, amused, saddened and ultimately elated.

Slapstick Tragedy is a package
of two one-act dramas, The Gndiges Fraulein and The Mutilated.

In The Gndiges Fraulein (German
for gracious lady), vicious scavenger birds repeatedly attack an
ex-vaudeville singer as she attempts to gather fish for her supper. The
Mutilated centers on a dilapidated New Orleans hotel and two seedy characters
-- one morbidly sensitive about having a breast removed. They quarrel and make
up in their miserable companionship, implying that all people suffer in one
way or another.

Though I was able to appreciate the style,
I could not bring myself to smile, said drama critic and Group Theater
co-founder Harold Clurman after the plays 1966 Broadway debut. I
was too conscious that its author was in pain.

By employing a creative use of place, the UM
theatrical crew creates a sense of magical realism in the tragicomedy as characters
walk and see through walls, Cuomo said. The crew also is using projected
images to acclimate audiences to a Tennessee Williams they might not be familiar
with, Cuomo added.

Actors gestures and voices help recreate
a style of the absurd, she added.

Williams reportedly wrote the mournful plays
while he was deeply depressed and concerned about his career as a playwright
and the role of the artist in society. His 1960s dramas, which critics term
absurdist, center on what he saw as the hopelessness, irrationality
and meaninglessness of life.

I became fascinated with absurdist drama
after working with graduate students on some (Samuel) Beckett pieces,
said Cuomo, who last season directed her original adaptation of The Little
Clay Cart.